In testimony, Guatemalans give account of suffering

MEXICO CITY — They were just children when Guatemalan soldiers rampaged through their villages, often killing their parents and siblings. Many fled to mountain forests, where they foraged for food and watched some of their numbers starve to death. Some were abducted and sent to other families to be raised, in cities and towns far from the life they had known.

Now, the somber Mayan men and women in their 30s and 40s have traveled from their villages to tell their stories for the prosecution during the first month of the genocide trial of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt in Guatemala City.

In the tortured logic of military planning documents conceived under Mr. Ríos Montt’s 17-month rule during 1982 and 1983, the entire Mayan Ixil population was a military target, children included. Officers wrote that the leftist guerrillas fighting the government had succeeded in indoctrinating the impoverished Ixils and reached “100 percent support.”...